2022年3月19日 星期六
Ukrainian forces have defeated the initial Russian campaign of this war. The ultimate fall of Mariupol is increasingly unlikely to free up enough Russian combat power to change the outcome of the initial campaign dramatically. Russian forces in the south appear to be focusing on a drive toward Kryvyi Rih, presumably to isolate and then take Zaporizhiya and Dnipro from the west but are unlikely to secure any of those cities in the coming weeks if at all. The Russian military continues to commit small groups of reinforcements to localized fighting rather than concentrating them to launch new large-scale operations. The culmination of the initial Russian campaign is creating conditions of stalemate throughout most of Ukraine. Stalemate will likely be very violent and bloody, especially if it protracts.
Key Takeaways:
We now assess that the initial Russian campaign to seize Ukraine’s capital and major cities and force regime change has failed;
Russian forces continue efforts to restore momentum to this culminated campaign, but those efforts will likely also fail;
Russian troops will continue trying to advance to within effective artillery range of the center of Kyiv, but prospects for their success are unclear;
The war will likely descend into a phase of bloody stalemate that could last for weeks or months;
Russia will expand efforts to bombard Ukrainian civilians in order to break Ukrainians’ will to continue fighting (at which the Russians will likely fail);
The most dangerous current Russian advance is from Kherson north toward Kryvyi Rih in an effort to isolate Zaporizhiya and Dnipro from the west.
Russian forces are unlikely to be able to surround or take Kryvyi Rih in the coming days, and may not be able to do so at all without massing much larger forces for the effort than they now have available on that axis;
The Russians appear to have abandoned plans to attack Odessa at least in the near term.
